Dear Middle School,
We believe in public education. That is one of the reasons we decided to keep our son enrolled in you rather than putting him in the fancy private school in the next town over. Public education is a public good. It is good for democracy. It is good to interact with a variety of different folks, not just the kind who can afford $13000 for the opportunity to attend year sixth grade.
But I think we need to talk. It wasn't cool how the music room had a bulletin board that talked about all of the various languages in which songs are written: Latin, French, German, Italian, Japanese, and African. African? Where is this weird orientalism coming from? Public education isn't supposed to otherize people like that. Public education shouldn't be in the business of that kind of ignorance. It's especially ironic, since Africans probably speak, on average, more languages than the rest of us. (As a side note, yes, they are languages. Let's please stop talking about how white people speak languages and black people speak dialects. That's racist, isn't it? Also, when an African language is mentioned, can white people please resist the impulse immediately to ask about whether it is one of those "clicking" languages?) How can an educated person look at a poster like that, every day for 180-some-odd days, and still not take it down? It makes me concerned.
It wasn't cool that you told us "chorus and some other stuff" when we asked you what "Music 6" means. When we inquired about the "other stuff" you couldn't really come up with anything, which also wasn't cool. Given the poor condition of the arts in our public education system, couldn't you at least have been sufficiently prepared and professional to have a sense of what you will be teaching in just a few days?
It's not cool how my son will not have had a history course after two years of you. No history? This is why my students think Columbo discovered the United States in 1776 while sailing the Mayflower. I'm glad he got half a year of geography last year, and that half a year of "social studies" is on the agenda for this year (although you had no interest-- or was it ability?-- to tell us what this means).
It really wasn't cool how you said Language Arts will consist of students writing creative stories during the beginning of class and then will read quietly at the end of class. That sounds like babysitting. When we asked you about whether our son would learn grammar and how to diagram a sentence, you said that 6th graders already know that stuff, which wasn't cool, because they don't. Heck, my college seniors don't know that stuff. Probably because you and your kin don't teach it anymore. And I bet that if I had asked you to describe what an indirect object pronoun is, you couldn't have done it. Which means you can't diagram a sentence either. Which means that foreign language learning is that much harder in college. Which means all of the awesome stuff that foreign language learning does for people is that much harder to come by. Because people can't diagram sentences and aren't learning in middle school what a past participle is.
It wasn't cool how the flyer you gave us had multiple spelling and grammatical errors, and how the schedule you gave our son had multiple errors as well.
I understand that it is a genuine challenge to do a good job when almost half of your students do not speak much English at home. I understand that it is difficult when 65% of your students qualify for free or reduced lunch. I understand that you are dealing with so many discipline problems that diagramming sentences seems like a pipe dream. It's hard for schools to do what they need to do when the home is having a hard time doing what it needs to do. And I'm excited about the new Foreign Language teacher who will be teaching French, Spanish, Italian and Dutch. Dutch? How cool is that? How many other middle schools are doing that? Is that one of those clicking dialects?
I don't mean to sound sour. Education is just so important, for the survival of our democracy, for our happiness as human beings.
Sincerely,
Concerned Parent
Friday, August 15, 2014
Monday, July 15, 2013
Standing Ovations
What is it with standing ovations in this country?
When a performance has been truly exceptional (and many are), I am happy to join my cohort of enthused audience members by rising and applauding the talent and execution of the performers. Excellence like theirs needs all of the support and applause it can muster, particularly during these difficult economic times.
But these days, it seems American audiences suffer from the Lake Wobegone effect, boldly declaring almost every performance above average, liberally meting out their highest praise for what should of right be reserved only for the truly noteworthy. European audiences more often know not to give their praise so promiscuously, to hand out their precious ovations so wantonly, to part with their enthusiastic applause so carelessly.
As a consequence, in America, the lines become blurry between adequate performances and those that truly inspire, between an evening’s entertainment and a life-changing event. The widespread grade inflation epidemic from our colleges and universities has now hit the Kennedy Center and the National Theatre.
But how did we get here? Like many parents, I have sat through my share of Kindergarten “graduations” and lopsided children’s soccer games in which one team entirely dominates another and yet no one may be declared “winner” or “loser.” All are excellent, all are bright, all are beautiful. It makes it difficult to distinguish the truly meritorious from the mediocre.
If we want to maintain our thriving artistic culture, in the District or anywhere else in our country, we must learn to restrain ourselves, to reserve our fondest praise for those exceptional performances that inspire not only their audiences but also other artists to improve their craft and constantly strive to exceed even their own expectations.
When a performance has been truly exceptional (and many are), I am happy to join my cohort of enthused audience members by rising and applauding the talent and execution of the performers. Excellence like theirs needs all of the support and applause it can muster, particularly during these difficult economic times.
But these days, it seems American audiences suffer from the Lake Wobegone effect, boldly declaring almost every performance above average, liberally meting out their highest praise for what should of right be reserved only for the truly noteworthy. European audiences more often know not to give their praise so promiscuously, to hand out their precious ovations so wantonly, to part with their enthusiastic applause so carelessly.
As a consequence, in America, the lines become blurry between adequate performances and those that truly inspire, between an evening’s entertainment and a life-changing event. The widespread grade inflation epidemic from our colleges and universities has now hit the Kennedy Center and the National Theatre.
But how did we get here? Like many parents, I have sat through my share of Kindergarten “graduations” and lopsided children’s soccer games in which one team entirely dominates another and yet no one may be declared “winner” or “loser.” All are excellent, all are bright, all are beautiful. It makes it difficult to distinguish the truly meritorious from the mediocre.
If we want to maintain our thriving artistic culture, in the District or anywhere else in our country, we must learn to restrain ourselves, to reserve our fondest praise for those exceptional performances that inspire not only their audiences but also other artists to improve their craft and constantly strive to exceed even their own expectations.
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
Deconstructing the College Tour
At many colleges and universities, summer is a time when the otherwise quiet campus becomes periodically punctuated with small groups of prospective students and their parents, all participating in the well-established summer ritual of visiting colleges and taking the prescribed campus tours. I pass them on my way to the library, these throngs of eager students and anxious parents led by an often enthusiastic and energetic guide. Sometimes I listen in on the dazzling descriptions of courses offered, extra-curriculars available, and campus amenities provided. In the competitive rush to attract the best students, the campus tour has become an important tool in marketing the institution to an increasingly informed and demanding public.
As someone whose education and career have included several kinds of institutions of higher learning, I have had the opportunity to observe and even participate in many different kinds of campus tours myself. While these tours naturally reflect the particularities of each individual institution, there nevertheless seem to be certain striking commonalities which speak to how American higher education markets itself to prospective students and their parents.
For example, while campus tours almost always include mention of various course offerings, I find that the emphasis is nevertheless usually on the extra-curricular amenities the institution provides, the alluring lifestyle the university promises in its mad dash to recruit the best students and assure a steady consumer base. Students are often made to tour impressive, multi-million dollar athletic facilities, replete with the now-standard climbing walls and “dive-in” movie nights (hyperlink http://www.aquaticsintl.com/2005/mar/0503_campus.html);to taste an increasingly diverse array of organic, upscale, and exotic foods; and to explore ever-luxuriating living arrangements, such as these recent marvels at various taxpayer-supported institutions (hyperlink http://www.cnn.com/2011/09/22/living/dorm-rooms/index.html). Indeed, it appears as though now even public colleges and universities are trying to create a campus that resembles, in Mark Edmundsen’s memorable phrase, a “retirement spread for the young” (hyperlink http://www.student.virginia.edu/~decweb/lite/3.html). And it seems that country club living is not just the purview of the wealthy private college anymore; even community colleges are now responding to the new needs of its student consumers and are getting in on the game. (hyperlink http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/02/27/younger-wealthier-students-pick-community-college-bringing-expectations).
What troubles me about this material turn in the American campus tour is not only that it tends to de-emphasize the academic engagement of the university community but also that it can actually undermine the values of equality and democracy that American higher education ostensibly supports. As campus luxuries increase, so does the cost of higher education itself, thus decreasing the accessibility of a college education for many folks who might otherwise be willing and able to attend. Furthermore, even many first-generation students who, through a combination of grants, loans and/or work-study programs, are able to attend a four-year college or university often find themselves out of place or uncomfortable in an environment where luxury has become the new norm. The social isolation sometimes faced by these students can make college a more difficult ordeal than it needs to be and may help to explain, at least in part, why so many otherwise academically qualified first-generation students fail to complete their degrees.
But the campus tour can also do harm to those non-first-generation students who are led to believe, as they are introduced to ever-expanding campus luxuries, that somehow their hard high school work has earned them these amenities, that monster-size stadiums, spacious student centers, and campus tanning salons are the natural rewards of their adolescent labors. Such students find themselves at the unfortunate intersection of entitlement and meritocracy, a place where they are told, at least implicitly, that they have somehow earned these vast expenditures made on their behalf. Indeed, the overinflated “edifice complex” that leads many universities to build and expand ever-multiplying campus buildings (many designed with student comfort and enjoyment in mind) often leads to an overinflated sense of entitlement on the part of students. Most devastating of all, though, is the moment when students realize, usually as they near graduation, that life after college does not offer the same easy rewards that the campus tour, with its overemphasis on student services and comfort, seems to promise. In the current economy, only the most concerted, consistent efforts can help students to find gainful employment, and even those who push themselves often end up unemployed or working in a job that does not require a college degree. In this way, the campus tour takes an ironically cruel turn; it promises the keys to a kingdom that in the end proves illusory for so many students. It whispers softly that these campus luxuries are part of your life now, that these comforts and amenities have now become part of your life’s landscape, thus setting students up for a fall as they come to terms with the reality of an economy in which one in two college graduates are either jobless or underemployed (hyperlink http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/22/job-market-college-graduates_n_1443738.html).
Universities, and faculty members in particular, must take back the campus tour by insisting on its academic content. Yes, prospective students should be shown the dormitories and the dining halls and be made familiar with the various facilities the campus has to offer, but not at the cost of underemphasizing the key mission of higher education, which is to educate students and provide them with opportunities for meaningful engagement with the world of ideas. By taking back the campus tour in this way, we help our students to set up more realistic expectations for their lives not only while in college but also for the future that awaits them upon graduation. Thus we help them to transition more smoothly into post-university life and to avoid the inevitable shock that results as reality clashes with expectation, especially when the expectation arises, to a significant degree, from the students’ own initial encounter with university life, namely, the campus tour.
As someone whose education and career have included several kinds of institutions of higher learning, I have had the opportunity to observe and even participate in many different kinds of campus tours myself. While these tours naturally reflect the particularities of each individual institution, there nevertheless seem to be certain striking commonalities which speak to how American higher education markets itself to prospective students and their parents.
For example, while campus tours almost always include mention of various course offerings, I find that the emphasis is nevertheless usually on the extra-curricular amenities the institution provides, the alluring lifestyle the university promises in its mad dash to recruit the best students and assure a steady consumer base. Students are often made to tour impressive, multi-million dollar athletic facilities, replete with the now-standard climbing walls and “dive-in” movie nights (hyperlink http://www.aquaticsintl.com/2005/mar/0503_campus.html);to taste an increasingly diverse array of organic, upscale, and exotic foods; and to explore ever-luxuriating living arrangements, such as these recent marvels at various taxpayer-supported institutions (hyperlink http://www.cnn.com/2011/09/22/living/dorm-rooms/index.html). Indeed, it appears as though now even public colleges and universities are trying to create a campus that resembles, in Mark Edmundsen’s memorable phrase, a “retirement spread for the young” (hyperlink http://www.student.virginia.edu/~decweb/lite/3.html). And it seems that country club living is not just the purview of the wealthy private college anymore; even community colleges are now responding to the new needs of its student consumers and are getting in on the game. (hyperlink http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/02/27/younger-wealthier-students-pick-community-college-bringing-expectations).
What troubles me about this material turn in the American campus tour is not only that it tends to de-emphasize the academic engagement of the university community but also that it can actually undermine the values of equality and democracy that American higher education ostensibly supports. As campus luxuries increase, so does the cost of higher education itself, thus decreasing the accessibility of a college education for many folks who might otherwise be willing and able to attend. Furthermore, even many first-generation students who, through a combination of grants, loans and/or work-study programs, are able to attend a four-year college or university often find themselves out of place or uncomfortable in an environment where luxury has become the new norm. The social isolation sometimes faced by these students can make college a more difficult ordeal than it needs to be and may help to explain, at least in part, why so many otherwise academically qualified first-generation students fail to complete their degrees.
But the campus tour can also do harm to those non-first-generation students who are led to believe, as they are introduced to ever-expanding campus luxuries, that somehow their hard high school work has earned them these amenities, that monster-size stadiums, spacious student centers, and campus tanning salons are the natural rewards of their adolescent labors. Such students find themselves at the unfortunate intersection of entitlement and meritocracy, a place where they are told, at least implicitly, that they have somehow earned these vast expenditures made on their behalf. Indeed, the overinflated “edifice complex” that leads many universities to build and expand ever-multiplying campus buildings (many designed with student comfort and enjoyment in mind) often leads to an overinflated sense of entitlement on the part of students. Most devastating of all, though, is the moment when students realize, usually as they near graduation, that life after college does not offer the same easy rewards that the campus tour, with its overemphasis on student services and comfort, seems to promise. In the current economy, only the most concerted, consistent efforts can help students to find gainful employment, and even those who push themselves often end up unemployed or working in a job that does not require a college degree. In this way, the campus tour takes an ironically cruel turn; it promises the keys to a kingdom that in the end proves illusory for so many students. It whispers softly that these campus luxuries are part of your life now, that these comforts and amenities have now become part of your life’s landscape, thus setting students up for a fall as they come to terms with the reality of an economy in which one in two college graduates are either jobless or underemployed (hyperlink http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/22/job-market-college-graduates_n_1443738.html).
Universities, and faculty members in particular, must take back the campus tour by insisting on its academic content. Yes, prospective students should be shown the dormitories and the dining halls and be made familiar with the various facilities the campus has to offer, but not at the cost of underemphasizing the key mission of higher education, which is to educate students and provide them with opportunities for meaningful engagement with the world of ideas. By taking back the campus tour in this way, we help our students to set up more realistic expectations for their lives not only while in college but also for the future that awaits them upon graduation. Thus we help them to transition more smoothly into post-university life and to avoid the inevitable shock that results as reality clashes with expectation, especially when the expectation arises, to a significant degree, from the students’ own initial encounter with university life, namely, the campus tour.
Friday, May 31, 2013
On Television
I used to read Pierre Bourdieu's "On Television" on wintry bus rides before and after work while living in Iowa.
Sometimes, I felt guilty because I was reading it in English translation.
Sometimes, I felt guilty because while other people on the bus were reading their Bibles, I was reading my Bourdieu.
I love Bourdieu and I love his "On Television" (and I'm glad he came out against the French headscarf ban), but he's nowhere near as good as the Bible.
I guess it was ok, though, since I read my scriptures every day anyway, just not on the bus.
I once heard Wole Soyinka say American hotel rooms should not have Bibles in them, they should have good literature. Nobel Prize or not, that is a moronic statement.
After not having any television for about a decade (with the exception of a few months with PBS), we have, in the last two years, had one year of cable and five months of basic cable. This has caused me some serious reflection on the nature of television, and while my reflections in no way reach the level and depth of analysis of Bourdieu's work on the subject, I still would presumptuously like to entitle them "On Television."
On Television
Wheel of Fortune feels like an anachronism. While Jeopardy seems to fit in the twenty-first century (as it constantly updates its trivia to fit new trends and experiences), Wheel of Fortune seems stuck in the eighties somewhere. I wonder how much longer it will last. I think America's Funniest Home Videos nearly suffered a similar threat of extinction, but then YouTube and on-line clips helped to resurrect the "funny video" genre of television. They also changed their name to "America's Funniest Videos," since the phrase "Home Videos" made the title of the show anachronistic, the change showing their keeping up with the times. Like Wheel of Fortune, America's Funniest Videos partakes in a kind of hokey 80s rhetoric that seems somewhat out of place today, but then there must be a market for that sort of thing, since it actually seems to pervade a lot of television, from game shows to local news casts to political debates. My six-year-old daughter pointed out another glaring anachronism on Wheel of Fortune recently when she asked (about Vanna White): "Daddy why doesn't that lady ever talk?" Not that misogyny is anachronistic (it is very much with us, in both new and traditional forms), but the idea of the silent woman who provides a pretty face and does most of the service grunt work (she turns the letters) while the man gets most of the attention and the up-close shots (Vanna is only a distant character) also seems increasingly out-of-date.
Jeopardy is about trivia-- let's not forget that. Trivia, by definition, is not very important. It is trivial. It is lightweight. So when students tell me that a colleague is so smart that he should be on Jeopardy, I cringe. Jeopardy is not about smart people. It is about people who are good at retaining trivial facts. Often these trivial facts are about tv shows, soap brands, and adolescent music tastes. It's amazing how much of the Jeopardy questions serve as advertising for corporate sponsors. "This brand of detergent promises to remove stains at twice the rate of its competitors." What is Tide? The contestant gets $500 for that, and the Tide company sees its bottom line expand. Nothing better than serving up anti-intellectual fare while selling it as classy, urbane, intellectual. Jeopardy has been called the thinking man's game show. Balderdash. The thinking man's game show would ask a question like "What is Art?" and then give contestants three days to write an essay about it. And no one would watch it.
This is why Downton Abbey does so well. More of a middle-brow audience here, but essentially a similar dynamic in operation. Put a soap opera in costume and add some accents, and your audience can now justify its soap opera tastes by masquerading them (literally "masquerading"-- putting them in costume) as intellectual fare. Downton Abbey and a host of other PBS Masterpiece Theater offerings (Selfridge, etc.) have abandoned the BBC bread-and-butter of Austen, Hardy, Eliot, and Dickens in exchange for the constant drama, sudden twists and turns, and explosive conflicts that seem to populate the screen every three minutes on these new shows. This is not the thoughtful, slow food/reading style of the classics, but rather the immediate gratification and short attention spans characteristic of the middle-brow modern age. With the new PBS dramas, not only can you have it your way right away, but you can even feel intellectual about it, and without the requisite effort. When a sudden death, an extramarital affair, an out-of-wedlock birth, and a violent altercation all happen within the span of sixty minutes, we have left nuance behind in favor of carnival barking.
Speaking of carnival barking, I cannot understand why the likes of Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Laura Ingraham, and Michael Savage have so much power in the Republican Party. They are carnival barkers and circus performers. The more hyperbole, the better. The more nebulous, cloudy, and sloppy the inferences, the better. The left has its barkers, too-- Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O'Donnell-- but you don't see them giving speeches at major political conferences (the way right-wing radio types do at CPAC, for example). You don't see them engaging in public debates with public officials (like Sean Hannity with Rocky Anderson, the former liberal mayor of Salt Lake City). I reject both Fox News and MSNBC for their obvious political bias and sloppy thinking, but I cannot understand why Republican politicians take their circus acrobats so seriously.
There is also a lot of bullying on television. We rightly decry bullying in our schools, and then we turn on our television sets and see entire shows devoted to it-- people in power bullying those who are powerless, simply because they can. Chef Gordon Ramsey, anyone? Shark Tank, anyone? Political talk shows on Fox News and MSNBC? Piers Morgan, and other testy interviewers on CNN and other stations? Simon Cowell bullied people for years, in the guise of "truth-speaking" or "frank honesty." You can't splatter bullying all over the airwaves and then, confused about its prevalence in our children's schools, decry it as an anomaly that must be extinguished.
You also can't wonder about violence in our schools, given our prime-time (and even plenty of daytime) television offerings. In the wake of the Newtown tragedy, I noticed just how many guns were all over television programming-- I would see in excess of twenty guns featured in the course of two hours of evening television, and that's with me constantly changing the channel to avoid guns. You can't make guns sexy, and glorify armed violence night after night (and even afternoon after afternoon) and then wonder why some people seek glory and sexiness through armed violence. I was shocked-- was my reaction extreme?-- to see a young boy thoroughly accessorized in the faux-weapons of carnage and destruction that we call war toys, at a church Halloween function some years ago. At church! Replete with faux-military uniform and war paint, this boy ran around the building with a fake M-16 and probably fifty fake bullets draped across his body. His violent play took him down hallways that offered pictures of the Prince of Peace--healing the blind, teaching children, expressing his love through ultimate atonining sacrifice-- and the irony wasn't lost on me. Perhaps this young boy-- innocent in all of this, merely reflecting the society into which he was born-- even thought he was being a patriot for Halloween, and I thought of President Kimball's statement:
"We are a warlike people, easily distracted from our assignment of preparing for the coming of the Lord. When enemies rise up, we commit vast resources to the fabrication of gods of stone and steel—ships, planes, missiles, fortifications—and depend on them for protection and deliverance. When threatened, we become antienemy instead of pro-kingdom of God; we train a man in the art of war and call him a patriot, thus, in the manner of Satan’s counterfeit of true patriotism, perverting the Savior’s teaching:
'Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;
“That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven.' (Matt. 5:44–45.)"
There are many other things I might say about television-- about the ironic artificiality of "reality tv" (and about how I had to readjust some of my views of reality television when BYUTV's "The District" came out), about the voyeurism of shows about fat people who lose weight, about everything that was wrong with the show "Splash," about how a show like "Shark Tank" could only succeed in America, and on and on, but this post is already too long.
Sometimes, I felt guilty because I was reading it in English translation.
Sometimes, I felt guilty because while other people on the bus were reading their Bibles, I was reading my Bourdieu.
I love Bourdieu and I love his "On Television" (and I'm glad he came out against the French headscarf ban), but he's nowhere near as good as the Bible.
I guess it was ok, though, since I read my scriptures every day anyway, just not on the bus.
I once heard Wole Soyinka say American hotel rooms should not have Bibles in them, they should have good literature. Nobel Prize or not, that is a moronic statement.
After not having any television for about a decade (with the exception of a few months with PBS), we have, in the last two years, had one year of cable and five months of basic cable. This has caused me some serious reflection on the nature of television, and while my reflections in no way reach the level and depth of analysis of Bourdieu's work on the subject, I still would presumptuously like to entitle them "On Television."
On Television
Wheel of Fortune feels like an anachronism. While Jeopardy seems to fit in the twenty-first century (as it constantly updates its trivia to fit new trends and experiences), Wheel of Fortune seems stuck in the eighties somewhere. I wonder how much longer it will last. I think America's Funniest Home Videos nearly suffered a similar threat of extinction, but then YouTube and on-line clips helped to resurrect the "funny video" genre of television. They also changed their name to "America's Funniest Videos," since the phrase "Home Videos" made the title of the show anachronistic, the change showing their keeping up with the times. Like Wheel of Fortune, America's Funniest Videos partakes in a kind of hokey 80s rhetoric that seems somewhat out of place today, but then there must be a market for that sort of thing, since it actually seems to pervade a lot of television, from game shows to local news casts to political debates. My six-year-old daughter pointed out another glaring anachronism on Wheel of Fortune recently when she asked (about Vanna White): "Daddy why doesn't that lady ever talk?" Not that misogyny is anachronistic (it is very much with us, in both new and traditional forms), but the idea of the silent woman who provides a pretty face and does most of the service grunt work (she turns the letters) while the man gets most of the attention and the up-close shots (Vanna is only a distant character) also seems increasingly out-of-date.
Jeopardy is about trivia-- let's not forget that. Trivia, by definition, is not very important. It is trivial. It is lightweight. So when students tell me that a colleague is so smart that he should be on Jeopardy, I cringe. Jeopardy is not about smart people. It is about people who are good at retaining trivial facts. Often these trivial facts are about tv shows, soap brands, and adolescent music tastes. It's amazing how much of the Jeopardy questions serve as advertising for corporate sponsors. "This brand of detergent promises to remove stains at twice the rate of its competitors." What is Tide? The contestant gets $500 for that, and the Tide company sees its bottom line expand. Nothing better than serving up anti-intellectual fare while selling it as classy, urbane, intellectual. Jeopardy has been called the thinking man's game show. Balderdash. The thinking man's game show would ask a question like "What is Art?" and then give contestants three days to write an essay about it. And no one would watch it.
This is why Downton Abbey does so well. More of a middle-brow audience here, but essentially a similar dynamic in operation. Put a soap opera in costume and add some accents, and your audience can now justify its soap opera tastes by masquerading them (literally "masquerading"-- putting them in costume) as intellectual fare. Downton Abbey and a host of other PBS Masterpiece Theater offerings (Selfridge, etc.) have abandoned the BBC bread-and-butter of Austen, Hardy, Eliot, and Dickens in exchange for the constant drama, sudden twists and turns, and explosive conflicts that seem to populate the screen every three minutes on these new shows. This is not the thoughtful, slow food/reading style of the classics, but rather the immediate gratification and short attention spans characteristic of the middle-brow modern age. With the new PBS dramas, not only can you have it your way right away, but you can even feel intellectual about it, and without the requisite effort. When a sudden death, an extramarital affair, an out-of-wedlock birth, and a violent altercation all happen within the span of sixty minutes, we have left nuance behind in favor of carnival barking.
Speaking of carnival barking, I cannot understand why the likes of Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Laura Ingraham, and Michael Savage have so much power in the Republican Party. They are carnival barkers and circus performers. The more hyperbole, the better. The more nebulous, cloudy, and sloppy the inferences, the better. The left has its barkers, too-- Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O'Donnell-- but you don't see them giving speeches at major political conferences (the way right-wing radio types do at CPAC, for example). You don't see them engaging in public debates with public officials (like Sean Hannity with Rocky Anderson, the former liberal mayor of Salt Lake City). I reject both Fox News and MSNBC for their obvious political bias and sloppy thinking, but I cannot understand why Republican politicians take their circus acrobats so seriously.
There is also a lot of bullying on television. We rightly decry bullying in our schools, and then we turn on our television sets and see entire shows devoted to it-- people in power bullying those who are powerless, simply because they can. Chef Gordon Ramsey, anyone? Shark Tank, anyone? Political talk shows on Fox News and MSNBC? Piers Morgan, and other testy interviewers on CNN and other stations? Simon Cowell bullied people for years, in the guise of "truth-speaking" or "frank honesty." You can't splatter bullying all over the airwaves and then, confused about its prevalence in our children's schools, decry it as an anomaly that must be extinguished.
You also can't wonder about violence in our schools, given our prime-time (and even plenty of daytime) television offerings. In the wake of the Newtown tragedy, I noticed just how many guns were all over television programming-- I would see in excess of twenty guns featured in the course of two hours of evening television, and that's with me constantly changing the channel to avoid guns. You can't make guns sexy, and glorify armed violence night after night (and even afternoon after afternoon) and then wonder why some people seek glory and sexiness through armed violence. I was shocked-- was my reaction extreme?-- to see a young boy thoroughly accessorized in the faux-weapons of carnage and destruction that we call war toys, at a church Halloween function some years ago. At church! Replete with faux-military uniform and war paint, this boy ran around the building with a fake M-16 and probably fifty fake bullets draped across his body. His violent play took him down hallways that offered pictures of the Prince of Peace--healing the blind, teaching children, expressing his love through ultimate atonining sacrifice-- and the irony wasn't lost on me. Perhaps this young boy-- innocent in all of this, merely reflecting the society into which he was born-- even thought he was being a patriot for Halloween, and I thought of President Kimball's statement:
"We are a warlike people, easily distracted from our assignment of preparing for the coming of the Lord. When enemies rise up, we commit vast resources to the fabrication of gods of stone and steel—ships, planes, missiles, fortifications—and depend on them for protection and deliverance. When threatened, we become antienemy instead of pro-kingdom of God; we train a man in the art of war and call him a patriot, thus, in the manner of Satan’s counterfeit of true patriotism, perverting the Savior’s teaching:
'Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;
“That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven.' (Matt. 5:44–45.)"
There are many other things I might say about television-- about the ironic artificiality of "reality tv" (and about how I had to readjust some of my views of reality television when BYUTV's "The District" came out), about the voyeurism of shows about fat people who lose weight, about everything that was wrong with the show "Splash," about how a show like "Shark Tank" could only succeed in America, and on and on, but this post is already too long.
Thursday, January 31, 2013
Lamentation
I lament the loss of the video rental store.
If you want to watch a movie nowadays, you have to resort to various on-line film databases (like Netflix, Hulu, Daily Motion, Amazon Instant Play, etc.). The problem with this approach, however, is that the variety and quality of the films available in these venues is generally quite poor and quite limited.
You might also go to your public library, which usually has a similarly limited selection, particularly when compared to the likes of the Blockbusters of yesteryear.
You might also rely on RedBox, but the problems here are manifold:
1. Redbox privileges the new, the trendy, the more-recent-than-the-so-2-weeks-ago. In this way, Redbox is the byproduct and expression of democracy, which intentionally blinds itself to all but the most extremely contemporary present. Redbox effectively invites amnesia of anything that is not of the highest presentist strain. Movies that came out more than six months ago will not appear in Redbox, ancient relics of a forgotten time when Blackberry had not even reinvented itself yet, relegated so quickly to the dustbin of history.
Also, Redbox seems to specialize in movies with animal protagonists.
In tandem with the loss of the video rental store has come the loss of the knowledgeable video store geek. I miss you, knowledgeable video store geek! Your demise comes at a heavy price. Gone are the days when your expertise led me quickly and excitedly to explore, upon your recommendation, further films which I may never have otherwise considered. The breadth of your knowledge and your passion for cinema now have no worthy venue. Today, your talent is forced into the shadows, relegated to the realm of anonymous Amazon reviews, an indignity so unbefitting your unique gifts.
Some may write off this view of the past as mere nostalgia, as naive "golden-age thinking" (yes, I saw Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris-- got it from Redbox) that fetishizes history and unfailingly locates utopia in the distant past. All true paradises are lost paradises, after all.
Yet we subscribe too credulously to the facile rhetoric of teleology. "Forward!" the politicians say. Are we always moving forward? Are there not also stops, false starts, regressions, redundancies in our history? Is there never any backsliding in the forward march of time? It was easier ten years ago for me to find the movie I wanted than it is today. Is this progress? Are there not abilities, possibilities, knowledge that get lost from one generation to the next? Were there not multiple apostasies? Do we really know all the things our ancestors knew?
So please do not misunderstand my longing for the snows of yesteryear as mere maudlin tripe. It is inscribed in a recognition that sometimes things get lost, that apostasy requires restoration, that one day all things shall be revealed. This is, for me, the lesson of the fall of the American video rental store.
If you want to watch a movie nowadays, you have to resort to various on-line film databases (like Netflix, Hulu, Daily Motion, Amazon Instant Play, etc.). The problem with this approach, however, is that the variety and quality of the films available in these venues is generally quite poor and quite limited.
You might also go to your public library, which usually has a similarly limited selection, particularly when compared to the likes of the Blockbusters of yesteryear.
You might also rely on RedBox, but the problems here are manifold:
1. Redbox privileges the new, the trendy, the more-recent-than-the-so-2-weeks-ago. In this way, Redbox is the byproduct and expression of democracy, which intentionally blinds itself to all but the most extremely contemporary present. Redbox effectively invites amnesia of anything that is not of the highest presentist strain. Movies that came out more than six months ago will not appear in Redbox, ancient relics of a forgotten time when Blackberry had not even reinvented itself yet, relegated so quickly to the dustbin of history.
Also, Redbox seems to specialize in movies with animal protagonists.
In tandem with the loss of the video rental store has come the loss of the knowledgeable video store geek. I miss you, knowledgeable video store geek! Your demise comes at a heavy price. Gone are the days when your expertise led me quickly and excitedly to explore, upon your recommendation, further films which I may never have otherwise considered. The breadth of your knowledge and your passion for cinema now have no worthy venue. Today, your talent is forced into the shadows, relegated to the realm of anonymous Amazon reviews, an indignity so unbefitting your unique gifts.
Some may write off this view of the past as mere nostalgia, as naive "golden-age thinking" (yes, I saw Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris-- got it from Redbox) that fetishizes history and unfailingly locates utopia in the distant past. All true paradises are lost paradises, after all.
Yet we subscribe too credulously to the facile rhetoric of teleology. "Forward!" the politicians say. Are we always moving forward? Are there not also stops, false starts, regressions, redundancies in our history? Is there never any backsliding in the forward march of time? It was easier ten years ago for me to find the movie I wanted than it is today. Is this progress? Are there not abilities, possibilities, knowledge that get lost from one generation to the next? Were there not multiple apostasies? Do we really know all the things our ancestors knew?
So please do not misunderstand my longing for the snows of yesteryear as mere maudlin tripe. It is inscribed in a recognition that sometimes things get lost, that apostasy requires restoration, that one day all things shall be revealed. This is, for me, the lesson of the fall of the American video rental store.
Saturday, November 10, 2012
Thoughts On A Rally
It may seem anti-climactic or untimely to write now about a Romney-Ryan rally I attended a few weeks ago, but I'm beginning not to care about the timeliness of my utterances. Timeliness is a strange value of democracies; Alexis de Tocqueville said as much in his Democracy in America and he was right about nearly everything. Democracies are mired in the present and subscribe to the primacy of the now; the past, no matter how ever-present, is rarely with us when our impulses are democratic. Technology, with its Twitter feeds and Facebook status updates, only increases the presentist turn. Stars and celebrities are made and forgotten within the 24-hour news cycle. So please forgive me as I demonstrate my utter indifference to the question of timeliness and continue with my supposedly already-outdated story unabashed.
I have the good fortune of living in a swing state. Politicians of all stripes visit my state, and sometimes my town, in the hopes of gaining those votes that matter most. I had a brief chat with Sen. Rick Santorum last week, after he signed my older son's sticker and before he patted my younger son's head and called him "Buddy." Within ten minutes of my conversation with this erstwhile (and possibly future) presidential candidate, I had chatted with the state Attorney General (who's running for governor), my representative in the U.S. House, and my state senator (who's running for Attorney General). And a few weeks before that, Tagg Romney was standing outside my office, in front of a big bus, and I got to shake his hand and have a chat.
We had a little French exchange, reminding me of another French exchange I had at a Republican rally in Iowa the night that Sarah Palin accepted the party's nomination for Vice-President. For all of the Republicans' Francophobia, I sure seem to keep finding the Francophile ones at these things. I think Jefferson would be proud. Maybe.
Anyway, the Romney-Ryan rally was interesting from the start. It took us three hours to make the 35-minute drive because of how backed up the traffic was on the unsuspecting highway. CNN reported an attendance of "over 4000"; the local paper estimated attendance was "over 6000." Politico probably had it closest when they later listed the attendance at 10,000. Part of the draw was the supportive music of Trey Atkins that preceded the main event, as well as the surprise visit and endorsement of the President and Vice-President of the National Rifle Association, who came across as inarticulate and out of the mainstream, a lethal combination.
Romney seemed more charismatic in person than on television, something I had observed when I saw him speak to a group of doctors in Iowa in 2007, though his physical movements and speaking rhythms still came across as somewhat awkward. Here is a man who I think would have benefitted from music lessons growing up. I've found that people who sing or play instruments (or even who just listen to a lot of good music) make better writers and speakers because they have an increased sense of rhythm, cadence, and pacing. Some dance lessons or organized sports might have helped with the physical awkwardness as well. But I can imagine what the media (or the Republican primary process, or the Democratic Party) would have done with a presidential candidate with dance lessons in his closet.
Ryan also spoke, but I don't have much to say about him. He came across as the nerdy policy wonk that he is, which I think is a good thing. I want people in office who know how to sit in an office and work out real problems as they sit and think and analyze.
But for me, the most interesting part of the evening happened after the rally was over. As the crowd dispersed and people began heading back to their cars, some police officers stopped us and created a thruway for the candidates and their security detail to pass through with their armored vehicles. This annoyed a number of people in the audience, since it kept them waiting for some extra twenty minutes before they could move freely back to their cars. The police officers were insistent, however, since it was the policy and practice of the armored vehicles to zip through the open pathway created in the crowd without stopping or slowing down, since to stop or slow down would represent a potential security risk for the candidates and their detail. Any person found in the open path would promptly be run over, and so it was of the utmost importance to keep the pathway free of people.
One young man didn't much care for the officers' instructions and loudly proclaimed that the rhetoric of freedom that he had just heard at the rally somehow stood in contrast to the officers' restrictive regulations. After a few moments' hesitation, he finally made a run for it, crossing the forbidden zone of the open pathway, and ran off before the police officers had even realized what had happened. One offficer, however, finally realized what had happened and chased the suspect down, and the next time I saw that guy he was in handcuffs.
The handcuffs probably didn't feel much like freedom, and neither does the criminal record that this young man now has attached to his name, I imagine. It probably wouldn't have felt very freeing if his violation of an officer's order had led to him or someone else being injured, maimed, or killed after being run over by a train of armored SUV's. The freedom that thinks only of itself, and only of its immediate wants, is no freedom at all. Such freedom is mere license, or licentiousness, which are words and concepts deceptively close to freedom and yet are only counterfeit versions of it (much like libertinism). Sometimes people are no more enslaved than at the moment they utter the words "Now I am free."
I have the good fortune of living in a swing state. Politicians of all stripes visit my state, and sometimes my town, in the hopes of gaining those votes that matter most. I had a brief chat with Sen. Rick Santorum last week, after he signed my older son's sticker and before he patted my younger son's head and called him "Buddy." Within ten minutes of my conversation with this erstwhile (and possibly future) presidential candidate, I had chatted with the state Attorney General (who's running for governor), my representative in the U.S. House, and my state senator (who's running for Attorney General). And a few weeks before that, Tagg Romney was standing outside my office, in front of a big bus, and I got to shake his hand and have a chat.
We had a little French exchange, reminding me of another French exchange I had at a Republican rally in Iowa the night that Sarah Palin accepted the party's nomination for Vice-President. For all of the Republicans' Francophobia, I sure seem to keep finding the Francophile ones at these things. I think Jefferson would be proud. Maybe.
Anyway, the Romney-Ryan rally was interesting from the start. It took us three hours to make the 35-minute drive because of how backed up the traffic was on the unsuspecting highway. CNN reported an attendance of "over 4000"; the local paper estimated attendance was "over 6000." Politico probably had it closest when they later listed the attendance at 10,000. Part of the draw was the supportive music of Trey Atkins that preceded the main event, as well as the surprise visit and endorsement of the President and Vice-President of the National Rifle Association, who came across as inarticulate and out of the mainstream, a lethal combination.
Romney seemed more charismatic in person than on television, something I had observed when I saw him speak to a group of doctors in Iowa in 2007, though his physical movements and speaking rhythms still came across as somewhat awkward. Here is a man who I think would have benefitted from music lessons growing up. I've found that people who sing or play instruments (or even who just listen to a lot of good music) make better writers and speakers because they have an increased sense of rhythm, cadence, and pacing. Some dance lessons or organized sports might have helped with the physical awkwardness as well. But I can imagine what the media (or the Republican primary process, or the Democratic Party) would have done with a presidential candidate with dance lessons in his closet.
Ryan also spoke, but I don't have much to say about him. He came across as the nerdy policy wonk that he is, which I think is a good thing. I want people in office who know how to sit in an office and work out real problems as they sit and think and analyze.
But for me, the most interesting part of the evening happened after the rally was over. As the crowd dispersed and people began heading back to their cars, some police officers stopped us and created a thruway for the candidates and their security detail to pass through with their armored vehicles. This annoyed a number of people in the audience, since it kept them waiting for some extra twenty minutes before they could move freely back to their cars. The police officers were insistent, however, since it was the policy and practice of the armored vehicles to zip through the open pathway created in the crowd without stopping or slowing down, since to stop or slow down would represent a potential security risk for the candidates and their detail. Any person found in the open path would promptly be run over, and so it was of the utmost importance to keep the pathway free of people.
One young man didn't much care for the officers' instructions and loudly proclaimed that the rhetoric of freedom that he had just heard at the rally somehow stood in contrast to the officers' restrictive regulations. After a few moments' hesitation, he finally made a run for it, crossing the forbidden zone of the open pathway, and ran off before the police officers had even realized what had happened. One offficer, however, finally realized what had happened and chased the suspect down, and the next time I saw that guy he was in handcuffs.
The handcuffs probably didn't feel much like freedom, and neither does the criminal record that this young man now has attached to his name, I imagine. It probably wouldn't have felt very freeing if his violation of an officer's order had led to him or someone else being injured, maimed, or killed after being run over by a train of armored SUV's. The freedom that thinks only of itself, and only of its immediate wants, is no freedom at all. Such freedom is mere license, or licentiousness, which are words and concepts deceptively close to freedom and yet are only counterfeit versions of it (much like libertinism). Sometimes people are no more enslaved than at the moment they utter the words "Now I am free."
Monday, November 7, 2011
What A Library Is
A place for coffee and pastries, for pizza nights, dance parties, and flash mobs.
A free DVD rental service, an iTunes listening station, an e-mail portal.
A commons for all kinds of social traffic.
A student union building.
A club where people get together, and a place where they break-up.
A place to study, when all the quiet of your room is making it hard to concentrate.
Where you get your photocopies, and the latest gossip.
Where they hold your hand until you figure out that all roads do not lead to JSTOR.
Where, after first exploring the more reliable resources of the local Barnes and Noble or Borders, you finally go, as a last resort, to get some books.
A free DVD rental service, an iTunes listening station, an e-mail portal.
A commons for all kinds of social traffic.
A student union building.
A club where people get together, and a place where they break-up.
A place to study, when all the quiet of your room is making it hard to concentrate.
Where you get your photocopies, and the latest gossip.
Where they hold your hand until you figure out that all roads do not lead to JSTOR.
Where, after first exploring the more reliable resources of the local Barnes and Noble or Borders, you finally go, as a last resort, to get some books.
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